Ali praying for old foe Frazier, 67, as former heavyweight champion fights cancer

Former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali says he is praying for Joe Frazier following the news of his great rival's battle against cancer.

It emerged over the weekend Frazier, 67, is fighting liver cancer and he is reported to be in hospice care.

In his prime: Frazier lands a left to the chin of Ali in the 15th round of their heavyweight title fight at New York's Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971

Fight of his life: Joe Frazier

Ali, 69, said: 'The news about Joe is hard to believe and even harder to accept. Joe is a fighter and a champion and I am praying he is fighting now.

'My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily prayers. Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him - and I'm one of them.'

Frazier beat Ali on points in the so-called 'Fight of the Century' in 1971, Ali's first professional defeat. But in two further fights, including the epic 'Thrilla in Manila' in 1975, it was Ali who was victorious.

The pair have had a fractious relationship over the years, stemming from the Ali's taunting of Frazier in the run-up to their famous trilogy of fights.

Ali called his rival a 'gorilla' and 'Uncle Tom', taunts which Frazier found difficult to forgive, though the pair were reported to have been on better terms in recent years.

Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67

Associated Press

Joe Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century.

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His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered hospice care.

Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with a crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad, powerful shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his devastating left hook.

It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman. He also recorded one draw.

A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was defined by his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the guise of a Great White Hope. Frazier detested him.

Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit given to spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and denigration alike, the one for his prowess and outsize personality, the other for his antiwar views and Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a bull-like man of few words with a blue-collar image and a glowering visage who in so many ways could be on an equal footing with his rival only in the ring.

Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a non-title bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye swollen shut, did not come out to face Ali for the 15th round.

The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to figure out just who held what title.

The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an adherent of the Nation of Islam, came to represent rising black anger in America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the favorite of the establishment. Ali called him “ignorant,” likened him to a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms.

“Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,” Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine following the first Ali-Frazier bout.

Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,” with “the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the pits all his life.”

Frazier could never match Ali’s charisma or his gift for the provocative quote. He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to give countless hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing of his body inside the ring.

“The way I fight, it’s not me beatin’ the man: I make the man whip himself,” Frazier told Playboy in 1973. “Because I stay close to him. He can’t get out the way.” He added: “Before he knows it — whew! — he’s tired. And he can’t pick up his second wind because I’m right back on him again.”

In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was, he said, “a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing room before sending me out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make smoke come from those gloves.’ “

Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect for him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”

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Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. “I’ve had plenty of other boxers with more raw talent,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 1970, “but none with more dedication and strength.”

Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the youngest of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked in the fields, and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school at 13. He dreamed of becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first punches at burlap sacks he stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore.

At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he moved to Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. Durham discovered Frazier boxing to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym in Philadelphia. Under Durham’s guidance, Frazier captured a Golden Gloves championship and won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen calling themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck, and overlay, a betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11 bouts by knockouts. By winter 1968 his record was 21-0.

A year before Frazier’s pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In April 1967, having proclaimed, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong,” Ali refused to be drafted, claiming conscientious objector status. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title, and he was convicted of evading the draft.

An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when his financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament, and Jimmy Ellis took the crown.

But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title recognized by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis with an 11th-round technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in February 1970, stopping Ellis, who did not come out for the fifth round.

In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing license, then knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena. The stage was set for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten fighters, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.

Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever. Frank Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former heavyweight champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H. Humphrey, back in the Senate after serving as vice president, sat two rows in front of the Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin, who shouted, “Ali, Ali,” her left fist held high. An estimated 300 million watched on television worldwide, and the gate of $1.35 million set a record for an indoor bout.

Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in height and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but he was a 6-to-5 betting favorite. Just before the fighters received their instructions from the referee, Ali, displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched Frazier’s shoulders as he whirled around the ring. Frazier just glared at him.

Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath Ali’s jabs. In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook, catching Ali on the jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third time Ali had been knocked down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous decision.

Frazier declared, “I always knew who the champ was.”

Frazier continued to bristle over Ali’s taunting. “I’ve seen pictures of him in cars with white guys, huggin’ ’em and havin’ fun,” Frazier told Sport magazine two months after the fight. “Then he go call me an Uncle Tom. Don’t say, ‘I hate the white man,’ then go to the white man for help.”

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For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate called Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first black man since Reconstruction to address the South Carolina Legislature. Ali gained vindication in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction for draft evasion.

Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973, knocking him down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before the referee stopped the fight in the second round.

Frazier met Ali again in a nontitle bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974. Frazier kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the clinches, but Ali scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-round decision.

Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire — the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on to knock out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second title fight, with Ali: the Thrilla in Manilla, on Oct. 1, 1975.

In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at the Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country’s capital, Manila. The conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the air-conditioning.

Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing style. Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000.

But in the fourth round, Ali’s pace slowed while Frazier began to gain momentum. Chants of “Frazier, Frazier,” filled the arena by the fifth round, and the crowd seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a contrast to Ali’s usually enjoying the fans’ plaudits.

Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary legs, unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier’s face in the 12th round. He knocked out Frazier’s mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him stumbling backward with a straight right hand.

Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round. Frazier had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a cataract, and his right eye was puffed and shut from Ali’s blows.

Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier’s corner, asked the referee to end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the scorecards of the referee and two judges. “It’s the closest I’ve come to death,” Ali said.

Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face Foreman at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a technical knockout in the fifth round. Frazier then announced his retirement. He was 32.

He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981 he returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings, fought to a draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his home in Philadelphia.

Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001 it was Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier’s daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought Ali’s daughter Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers in their first fight, both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision. Joe Frazier was in the crowd of 6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by Parkinson’s syndrome, was not.

Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for Ali. But in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier bout, Ali told The New York Times: “I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.”

Asked for a response, Frazier said: “We have to embrace each other. It’s time to talk and get together. Life’s too short.”

When Frazier’s battle with liver cancer became publicly known, Ali was conciliatory. “My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily prayers,” Ali said in his statement. “Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him, and I’m one of them.”

Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured.

After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should concentrate on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama. Stevens’s prescription: “More Ali and less Joe Frazier.”

Frazier’s true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky.

The 2009 British documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” shown in the United States on HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his apartment above the gym he ran in Philadelphia.

“He’s a good-time guy,” John Dower, the director of “Thrilla in Manila,” told The Times. “But he’s angry about Ali.”

In March 2011, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier fight, Frazier attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and told reporters that he had not seen Ali in person for more than 10 years.

“I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years,“ The Daily News quoted Frazier as saying. “I hope he’s doing fine. I’d love to see him.”

But as Frazier once told The Times: “Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But who would he have been without me?”

Joe Frazier was born in Laurel Bay, South Carolina, on January 12, 1944. “Smoking Joe” Frazier never set out to set the boxing world alight.

He began going to the gym to get himself into shape. However, one thing led to another, and he began competing. He was the youngest of thirteen children. He started his boxing career at age nine, when he rigged up a homemade punching bag of moss and leaves.

Twelve years later, after having married at sixteen, he moved to Philadelphia, where he won the Golden Gloves in 1962, 1963 and 1964. He also won American's only gold medal in the Boxing at the Tokyo Olympics.

With a group of businessmen from Philadelphia, Cloverlay, Inc, as his sponsors, Frazier launched his professional career on August 16, 1965, with a one-round knockout over Woody Goss.

He oiled up ten straight knockouts before meeting Oscar Bonavena on September 21, 1966.

Bonavena floored Frazier twice in the second round, but Frazier rallied to win a ten-round decision.

Above is footage of Frazier's fight against Eddie Machen in November 1966. After four more victories, three of which were knockouts, Frazier was pitted against Chuvalo on July 19, 1967.

In the fourth round, the tough Canadian was knocked out for the first time in his career.

When Frazier fought Buster Mathis on March 4, 1968, he was determined to clear any hint of tarnish from his Olympic medal. Before Frazier went to Tokyo he had won thirty-eight of forty right, His two losses had been to Mathis in the Olympics trials.

When Mathis had a broken knuckle, Frazier had the upper hand. "Smokin Joe" flattened Mathis with a left with a left hook in 2:33 of the eleventh round.

Frazier became undisputed world champion on February 16, 1970, when the gong rang for the opening of the fifth round and the W.B.A's champion, Jimmy Ellis, couldn't come out. After the first round, in which Ellis held a margin, Frazier dominated the match with a steady and relentless style of strong, heavy pressure.

As the end if the fourth round approached, Frazier bombarded Ellis's body and head until the Kentuckian sank to that mat for a count of nine, during which the bell rang. Raising himself at the nine.

Ellis managed to get to this corner, when the fifth round gong rang sounded, manager Angelo Dundee motioned to referee Tony Perez that Ellis could not continue.

The first encounter with Ali took place on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden before 20,445 fans plus 1.3 million watching closed-circuit theatre TV. Ali who described his own fighting style as "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" was slowed down by Frazier's constant pounding.

Ali's strategy was to let Frazier become arm weary while flicking tiring jabs at his opponent, but despite a 6 1/2 inch disadvantage in reach, Frazier managed to get in under Ali's jab to land countless left hooks to the Ali's body.

Frazier suffered a swollen jaw and lumps around both eyes, while Ali merely sported a hematoma on the right side of his jaw.

Frazier won unanimously with referee Arthur Mercante giving him eight rounds, six to Ali and Judge Bill Recht awarded eleven to Frazier and four to Ali.

The only knock down occurred in the fifteenth round, when Ali was dropped for the third time in his career but bounced back after the mandatory eight count.

Before facing George Foreman, Frazier fought Terry Daniels in New Orleans on January 15, 1972, then Ron Stander, in Omaha, on May 25, 1972. The odds against his two opponents were 15 to 1 and 20 to 1 respectively. Danis lasted four rounds, Strander, five.

On January 22, 1973, at Kingston, Jamaica, Frazier, a 3-1 favourite, was floored six times by Foreman before referee Arthur Mercante stopped the action at 1:35 of the second round before 36,000 fans. Frazier pressed the attack, but was met by a challenger who moved out a step backward.

A right to the jaw by Foreman achieved the first knockdown midway into the first round. Frazier got up, exchanged a few punches, and was down again from a series of rights to the head.

Again Frazier rose quickly, but obviously dazed, and he was decked a third time as the bell ended the round. As set down by the rules, counting did not end with the bell, but was continued until Frazier struggled up at the count of three.

Frazier opened round two with a rushing attack and a left hook to the head, but was a short rally. Foreman, who weighed 217 pounds to Frazier's 214 pounds, sent the champion to the mat for the fourth time with a left-right to the jaw.

Up at the count of two, Frazier was dropped by two left hooks. Again Frazier struggled up but then went down for the last time from a series of punches.

Frazier gamely got to his feet, but referee Arthur Mercante looked at his glazed eyes and reeling figure and signalled that there was a new champion.

After the George Foreman bout, Joe Frazier went on to fight Joe Bugner in London on July 2, 1973 whom he beat in twelve rounds and then on January 28, 1974.

Frazier and Ali fought again at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,746, who paid a live gate of $1,053,688 and a theatre-TV audience that paid £25,000,000.

The closed-circuit TV audience reached 10,000,000. The gross revenue for the fight, including foreign film rights, etc, came to $25,000,000.

In their previous fight, Frazier went straight in to his opponent while Ali sidestepped and countered. Frazier scored decisively and often to the body.

Ali hit only to Joe's head, but more often and with more power than previously.

The most controversial moment of the fight occurred in the second round when referee Tony Perez stopped the fight, thinking he had heard the bell ring.It was a crucial time.

Frazier ad Ali in a corner, but Ali spun and jabbed out of trouble and hit Frazier solidly on his puffing cheekbone.

After taking a long left hook to the chin, Ali came back to confuse and hurt Frazier with lefts and chopping rights to the head.

It was at this point the referee stepped in; stalling the only opportunity Ali had to finish his man.

The seventh was Frazier's big round. The first of several good left hooks connected thirty seconds into the round, stunning Ali.

Ali was off his toes, flatfooted, as Frazier again carried the action in the eighth. Although Ali was tired, he rallied to outpunch Frazier for the last nine minutes and was awarded a unanimous decision for the twelve rounds by referee Tony Perez and judges Tony Castellano and Jack Gordon.

1975 was, once again, a year of rematches for Frazier, but this time they involved more overseas travel. He met Jimmy Ellis, the man from whom he had originally taken the WBA title, in Melbourne, Australia, knocking him out in nine rounds.

That win made him once again the number-one challenger for the world crown, now held by Ali after an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman in the famous "Rumble in the Jungle".

Ali and Frazier met for the third and final time in Quezon City (a district within the metropolitan area of Manila), the Philippines, on October 1, 1975: the "Thrilla in Manila".

Ali took every opportunity to mock Frazier, again calling him The Gorilla, and generally trying to irritate him.

The fight for Ali’s title, which was attended by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, caused another media frenzy and was seen lives around the world.

It was far more action-filled than the previous encounter (there was no belt at stake in the second fight), and was a punishing display that ended when Eddie Futch stopped the fight before the 15th and final round with Frazier sitting on his stool.

In 1976, Frazier fought and again lost to George Foreman, this time by fifth-round knockout, and retired.

In 1981, Frazier attempted a comeback that lasted only one fight, drawing in 10 rounds with Floyd "Jumbo" Cummings in Chicago, Illinois. He then retired for good.